


The Heretic

by Guede



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Infidelity, Jealousy, Love Triangles, M/M, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 19:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17710547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: David Villa doesn’t follow doctrine.  Raúlisdoctrine, these days.





	The Heretic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2008. Story spans 2005-2008.

“What is much desired is not believed when it comes.”  
\-- _Spanish proverb_

* * *

It starts with a phone call.

David rolls over and runs into Fernando’s sprawled form. His arm slips off the man’s back and he fumbles in the sheets for a moment, sleep-dazed and uncoordinated, not sure which way is right. Then he blinks and the world sharpens, and the ringing becomes annoying. He recognizes the tune, and it doesn’t sound any better when overlaid with crisp electronic tones than it did blasting out of the radio in the dressing-room.

It’s Fernando’s phone. Fernando isn’t waking up any time soon—deep down David feels an echo of his earlier satisfaction at that thought, still young enough to be proud of that—and so David gets himself over the other man and off the side of the bed. On the way he leans a hip and one arm on Fernando’s broad back that barely sinks beneath his weight. He’s young and he’s only been at Valencia a year, and when he glances at Fernando it’s not because he’s worried the man will catch David getting his phone, or that Fernando will be upset about it. It’s because he still wonders whether Fernando thinks this is a step down.

When the ringing stops, the silence floods in through the gash still left in the air. David holds his breath as he flicks open the phone, puts it to his ear. He waits.

*Fernando?* asks a male voice.

David breathes.

*Sorry it’s late,* Raúl continues, apologetic, warm, a man instead of the cool figure on the pedestal at nationals. Already David’s thinking it’s a little old, a little funny, that distance, but he’s still young and only a year into internationals and maybe he got ahead of Raúl at the World Cup but they still crashed _out_ of that, didn’t they. And he’s young but he knows Spain, he knows not to depend on the nice things they’ve been saying about him—yet. *But—*

“No,” David says.

Raúl sucks in his breath. He’s angry, not startled or frightened, David thinks, and suddenly David wants to throw the phone across the room. What, why not fear? Why _not_? Does he know why David’s answering the damn call instead of Fernando? Does he think he knows fucking _everything_ , Raúl, thinks he’s fucking Spain because he’s fucking Real? Does he?

*David.*

Who stumbles, so caught up in his rage that for a moment the world won’t lie flat beneath his feet. He drives his fingers into the top of the bedside table, then swings back and leans on Fernando, on the long lean body on the bed with _him_. Real doesn’t reach everywhere; Fernando’s already shown David that by showing up in Valencia, and David remembers his lessons. He’s had to, unlike some who’ve been rich enough to have their whipping-boys. “What?”

*David,* Raúl says again, slower, colder. He’s not apologizing now. *Tell Fernando that he left his razor here.*

Then there’s silence again, and David sits and stares till the phone beeps piercingly in his ear and he drops it. Then he picks it up. He turns it off, and he swings his arm to throw it but remembers then that it’s Fernando’s, not his.

So he puts it back in Fernando’s jeans, and then rolls over the other man. His hand glides down Fernando’s shoulder and Fernando stirs, turns over. Blinks at David, not knowing he’s left his razor somewhere, and smiles, and David doesn’t say anything.

He’s young. He thinks he’s proving something.

* * *

David isn’t good at expressing himself with words. He’s never been great at it, never wanted to be, no matter how much the PR people hate him for it. He’d rather act.

He’s up for internationals, one of the new ones, the trials and when he thinks that he doesn’t see some courtroom but dark walls, iron instruments, blood on the floor. His heartbeat doesn’t flutter or pound but instead comes in uneven groans in his ears, like the strain in the walls of a coal mine. When he jams his feet into his boots, he feels them tremble and he presses his whole weight down into the soles, grimacing.

The room’s full of people and for a moment David hates them all for being here, for crowding in and swinging their arms and cracking their jokes, for fucking around with their hair like this doesn’t mean shit. Except for Raúl in the corner, the captain, Spain himself, silent and slow and methodical, moving like maybe after all this time he still really feels that pressure. Like he isn’t so blown up and deified that it doesn’t just bounce right off him, doesn’t even _dare_ to touch him. David hated the man before he even got on the plane, before he got the call because he’s seen this before so many times in his head, banging at him like a hammer, and he knows how it plays out. There’s only one way when they play the same position, and one’s a god and one’s a man.

He bumps into Raúl, then drags his hip across the other man’s as he walks on. But the hip against his own rolls, and David feels it sweep over the side of his face, like a chilly breeze. Somebody’s looking at him.

David’s never been good with words. He just acts.

* * *

“Scoring’s like blood to me,” he’d told somebody. “It’s—”

“You sound like a vampire.” They’d laughed. He hadn’t gotten mad. That cut down who it could’ve been: Patricia, or David Silva or maybe even Fernando.

David doesn’t remember. He’d been too wrapped up in the emotion, in trying to work it out from his tongue and his hands twisted around each other, and the knots in his body making him writhe in place. He hated explaining himself: he wasn’t so arrogant to think that he didn’t need to, but it just—was hard. “No. It’s like…in you, just in you. It’s always in you and it pushes you, it moves through your heart and makes you live. So I—that’s how it is.”

They’d been quiet then, and if he doesn’t remember who it’d been, he remembers their eyes, so solemn and still, like the darkness of coal. Coal’s dirt, an old-timer in his town once told him, just dirt under pressure. Don’t let anybody fool you, the man had snorted. Them, they’ll say diamonds and coal come from the same thing, but you ever see _coal_ \--because everybody can picture a diamond—you know that can’t be. Coal doesn’t shine, coal doesn’t glisten, but coal sucks in light, air, men. Coal _works_.

So does blood.

* * *

The first time. He’d been angry at being surprised, David thinks now. Angry because he’d known Raúl was a big star who didn’t care, a god who’d forgotten gods are created by worshippers, and so he hadn’t figured the man would have it in him.

Raúl had said something like, “You were good, congratulations, but I couldn’t help noticing in the dressing-room—”

Maybe. Maybe he’d just looked like he’d said that. It seems now like that’s a lot of words for the man, who talks less than David and always, always, David’s startled anew when he realizes that. He has to realize it, since he’s always forgetting. Maybe that’s why he wants the bruises. It makes it harder to forget when he’s shoved somebody into a wall, when he’s flexed his fingers into their biceps and stared into their eyes, seen pupils gasp wide and he’s fucking _mad_. He’s scored and he’s on the fucking national team and he’s mad and he’s mad because he’s just slammed around his captain.

David hadn’t said anything that he can remember. He doesn’t think he’d said anything period, in fact. He’d just pushed and Raúl had let him push and for all the reruns of the dream in David’s head, he’d never seen that.

The first time. Raúl doesn’t seem to remember, either.

* * *

“Well, Villa is Villa,” Fernando had said at one point, dismissively. Then he’d smiled, and slid his fingers into Raúl’s hair, warm as the sun but firmer, stronger. “And the press is the press, and honestly—”

“Did he or didn’t he say those things?” Raúl had been sharp. Because he knew the press too, and because he’d spoken with them before and then had seen what they’d had him say afterward. And because something hadn’t been right and deep down he wasn’t a liar but he hadn’t wanted to say, not yet, because he hadn’t yet been thirty and thirty was when they said strikers—but no. Not yet.

Fernando had never been a liar either. Nor a nice man, for all his warmth and ease, for the way he could, simple as breathing, slip Raúl back behind the glory and the expectations and the weight, back behind that curtain that so seemed like a wall some days. He’d smiled, and tilted his head. “I don’t care,” he’d said.

He’d said the same when Raúl had come to see him off to Monaco, to Liverpool, to Valencia, heavy-footed, thinking that for all his vaunted power he had done nothing. Nothing, and he had always looked at Fernando and waited for the man to ask him, _Well, so was it nothing you did or you did nothing?_

Except it’d always been: “I don’t care.” With a smile, and careful, gentle fingers in Raúl’s hair and Raúl loves the man, he always will, but at some point they grow up. At some point, _he_ cares.

* * *

Hands in shorts, or maybe it’s a towel that David’s hiked up, some flimsy piece of cotton that only sticks because they’re still wet from the showers. Either way he’s looking at it, with his head down and his hands between Raúl’s thighs and there are scrapes and bruises on them, flaws on a god and he can’t help pressing them. He thinks he fucking loves them, for fucking up Raúl.

He looks down, and he doesn’t know where Raúl looks but it’s not at him. He can hear Raúl’s breath passing over his head, beside his head, off to the side, and the man’s not looking at David pinning him to the wall, David pressing his thigh up to find a heavy hard cock, David biting his own goddamn lip for the blood in it. He’s not looking. He’s gasping, his fingers are hooked into David’s shoulder, his cock bends into David’s palms and he twists, his semen splattering them both, and he doesn’t watch that. It must help him with the forgetfulness.

In the beginning David had figured bruises were enough. Bruises, to show where he’d been and that that where had been humping a fucking Spanish footballing god into the tiles, raking his teeth over the shoulder and neck and fuck him, fuck Raúl, he has the lackeys to get that covered up with make-up. Fuck him, but he’d get home later to _Madrid_ and have to take off the make-up and look at himself. To look at _David_ , David on his neck, David on his chest and thighs, David all over him and maybe David wasn’t much now, just an “up-and-comer” but by God, Raúl would know where David fucking was. In Madrid. On him.

That’s fucking stupid, obviously. They get bruised in the game. Raúl’s fingers sometimes slip and press into sore spots on David’s back, strains between his shoulders where the muscle’s tried to tear apart because David may not be a god but he can fucking work and run and if he runs hard enough, fast enough, then maybe he’ll fucking fly. Like a bird. Like a bird, and not a man trudging off the grass, feeling that nick on his shin, touching the scrape down his side and thinking about that bastard defender and—so he realizes. Bruises don’t do anything. Their life comes with bruises, even for Raúl. Even though he’s God and untouchable, untarnishable and fuck him, _fuck_ him.

David’s hands push further and further. He sees less of the towel, shorts, whatever. More skin. Raúl starts dropping his hands from David’s shoulders down David’s arms, pushing. Trying to get them away, maybe, only David isn’t going to fucking let him and this is one time where Raúl just doesn’t fucking get it. Fuck him, anyway.

* * *

The thing about Monaco was Fernando wasn’t there long enough. The thing about Liverpool was that it was England, and Fernando was often injured and not playing, and Raúl loves him so he’ll swallow and sit down next to Fernando and smile. He’ll make the man feel better.

The thing about Valencia is that it’s still in Spain but it’s not Madrid. Of course Raúl can come when they’re not playing, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a match-day. He did switch from Atlético, but that was a long time ago and he’s forgotten that boy and so have the rest of Spain, except maybe for Fernando who just keeps asking, like he doesn’t even consider it all. He does, but—Raúl won’t push. In the beginning he didn’t because he was afraid, but now he doesn’t because he doesn’t think about it anymore. Some opportunities pass on, and can’t be gotten back. It’s a lesson you learn when you’re old—older.

He asks Luís about it at one point, and then hangs up, annoyed, because he thinks Luís is mocking him. Though when he finally goes east, he takes all the man’s advice about travelling and hiding and is grateful for it, in the end.

Fernando’s happy to see him. Victoria’s happy to see him, and so are the children. It’s a nice visit. Raúl enjoys himself.

In a dark corner of the house, nervous like when they were younger, he and Fernando wrap themselves around each other. Raúl stares into the man’s face, though it takes more concentration than he wants to give when he has Fernando’s hands on him, when their lips press together and the low rolling noise in Fernando’s throat vibrates into Raúl’s mouth. But he misses the man, misses seeing him, misses the long lashes that lie against Fernando’s cheeks when he squeezes them shut like he always does, like he can’t even bear to distract himself that much.

And later, dressed, neat, Fernando’s hand casually on Raúl’s shoulder with fingertips dipping into Raúl’s collar, they talk and they’re friends too, and Raúl misses that. He misses it so much that he doesn’t catch it at first, and has to ask Fernando to repeat himself.

“Villa. David,” Fernando clarifies. He holds his head to the side, relaxed, not a thread of tension in him and he looks at Raúl and says that.

Fernando’s not stupid, or blind. He knows what he does. He always has, even when Raúl’s wanted to scream and weep and hit the man all at once to just make him _see_ —but Fernando does. So he says that, knowing, and Raúl sits there for a while.

“Sorry.” That’s genuine apology in Fernando’s eyes. He is regretful, just as he was deliberate a moment before. He’s not malicious but he’s passionate and driven and he does as he thinks is fit, at any given time. “But he is a teammate.”

“I know,” Raúl says, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

When he opens his eyes, Fernando is puzzled and Raúl knows that Fernando’s looked like that since Raúl spoke, because Fernando is knowing but not malicious or political or bitter. If he’d been any of those things, he would’ve stayed in Madrid. If he’d been any of those things, Raúl wouldn’t still wonder if he’d done enough for his teammate, his friend, his lo—if he’d been any of those things. But he’s not.

And Raúl. Raúl can be. Raúl regrets, too, but whereas Fernando regrets because he sees he’s caused hurt, Raúl regrets because he thinks he should be better than he is.

He should’ve done something, he thinks. He didn’t.

* * *

Not the showers, or wherever the fuck they’d been doing it. Team hotel, David’s room, David over two years on the national team and the World Cup failure behind them. Shit start in qualifiers for the Euros and people are finally noticing that for a god, Raúl’s pretty damn bad, and some of them are saying _David Villa, David Villa_. It’s not that David is counting on it yet. He knows better. But he can hear it, on the horizon, and he can hear that it’s coming and not going and fucking Raúl just ignores it all. David knocks the bag from Raúl’s shoulder while they’re milling around by the bus, like he’d done it on accident. At least Raúl’s not so stupid he can’t pick up on that.

Raúl’s still captain, even if David can feel the shift coming. He comes, like a good captain, to have it out and David pushes and Raúl doesn’t push back. It takes the wall to stop him, and then he has his hands in David’s suit-jacket and David’s already yanked Raúl’s down to his elbows. The cloth might’ve torn—so fucking what? Probably the staff will drool all over themselves when Raúl asks one of them to sew it up; things are changing but not fucking fast enough even when David got the nod ahead of Raúl at the World Cup, even when—

He bites and gets a mouthful of Raúl’s tie and collar. He’s got his hands under Raúl’s shirt now, in the man’s trousers, Raúl’s belt lashing him over the back of the hand as he rips it out of the loops, like a reprimand. Too goddamn late, and David just snarls at it. He’d laugh but he’s too short of breath, Raúl’s neck in his mouth and his blood beating in his ears. He pushes at Raúl’s hips, his nails catching on the skin, and then he shoves them down onto the floor and pushes Raúl’s knees apart and Raúl doesn’t stop him. Hands on David’s shoulders, head turned to the side, staring at the bathroom door.

David isn’t a fucking sadist. He throws himself off the man, almost angry that he’s not because this is slower, and swings into the bathroom. The little bottles rattle every which way when he sticks his hand among them and he doesn’t know whether he gets the shampoo or the lotion but whatever it is, it’ll have to do.

He comes back and Raúl’s still there on the floor, tie flopped over his shoulder, shirt-tails up where David left them, knees splayed. As David kneels, Raúl turns his head and for the first time looks at David and some awful, grinding, skin-flaying noise rises in David’s throat. The bottle-cap pops in his hand as he crushes it off.

Raúl looks up at the ceiling, and David lets out the noise and slaps one of Raúl’s knees, the one that’s not on the floor. Then he slicks up his fingers and his cock, and he fucks his fucking captain, his so-called god because he’s Spanish and loves football and of course that means he loves Raúl except he fucking _doesn’t_. He just fucks him. Raúl. Fucks till Raúl’s eyes are pointed his way again but they’re glassy, unseeing and David is so angry he shakes instead of coming, he shakes and Raúl shakes but Raúl stops and David doesn’t. David just keeps fucking the man, till Raúl looks away again and then David comes.

* * *

“Well, don’t you think so?” David had snapped.

Fernando had grinned, lazy, slow. “David, he’s my best friend. Of course not.”

And David had sat there, still feeling the clench of the man, still shaking off the dizziness, and his mouth had been open but nothing had come out. He’d not done anything either.

Eventually Fernando had stopped grinning, and instead had looked sorry, sorry and sad and just a little annoyed. He’d shrugged, with that liquid way of his that came only from true ease, from a skin fitting just right. “It’s not that you don’t make good points. I don’t necessarily disagree, when it comes to the football. But I know him as a friend, David. So what do you expect me to say?”

_That I’m going to be your friend. Because you’re here. Because he’s not here and not that good, not really, and you know that. Because I’m better._

“I don’t know,” David had finally said, helpless and hating the feeling. Helpless because that was the truth, because that was all he could say when he was looking at Fernando, a man who could agree with David but be friends with Raúl and not be lying either way. Because he wasn’t like that at all and he’d always believed you couldn’t be like that, but here Fernando was and David liked him and couldn’t say now that it was wrong. And that meant he’d been wrong and he hated being wrong. Because—

—you can’t think about being wrong or right, you can’t stop for that long, because if you do then it’ll always be wrong because you’ll be _gone_ , and gone means nothing and nothing is wrong—

\--David liked Fernando, he’d thought, looking at the man. He liked him. And that had been when he started thinking that it was wrong, what he was doing with Fernando, because he liked him and he didn’t do this to people he liked.

* * *

“About Villa—”

“I know,” Raúl had said, looking straight at the other man.

Fernando had looked surprised, then incredulous, and finally relieved. His shoulders had slackened. He’d been afraid, after all these years, he’d left and Raúl had allowed it. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“No, I know.” Because it didn’t. Nothing Fernando did ever would, with what he’d already done without changing a thing. But Raúl had left it there, and let the other man smile at him and let himself enjoy that smile when he had Villa’s nail-marks still itching on his thighs. He wasn’t Fernando. Fernando could say that and put his hand up against Raúl’s cheek, and Raúl would stand there and be quiet and let him.

And then Fernando had pulled, and Raúl hadn’t come because he wasn’t Fernando but he could still feel guilt, could still know right from wrong even with what he’d done and did and would do in the future. He hadn’t come and Fernando had frowned, looking at him, and Fernando was knowing but he hadn’t known anything. Not till then.

Raúl had regretted it. He’d _regretted_ —it was too soft a word, too gentle for the moment between Fernando knowing and Fernando not smiling but staying and pushing his fingers further, back into Raúl’s hair. Like he’d used to, and as of that moment, it’d become “used to.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” Fernando had said.

Not for him. He never changed. But Raúl wasn’t him.

* * *

Fernando got recalled to the national team at some point. David was happy for him. He remembered being that. He just didn’t remember much else about it. There was still a big hole in the team, and everyone was talking about it but that wasn’t what bothered David about it.

“You’re just as good,” somebody told him, soothingly, truthfully. David Silva, probably. It had to be a teammate, since Patricia knew David was good just as much as David knew it and so never would have said that. So it was Silva, because Silva was a nice calm kid who knew not to pry and right then David hadn’t been talking so much to Fernando.

David’s never been good at liking something. It’s too in-between for him. He feels like he’s stopping, and he can’t stop. He prefers hate. Or love.

* * *

Raúl’s not even in a suit, just in jeans and a shirt and David’s still wearing his traveling suit for the national team. He knows Raúl thinks about that, because it’s Raúl and David can’t fucking help himself.

David wants to fuck the man hard and quick and then go, because he’s got to get home and he can’t be stopping in Madrid, and because he _is_ fucking better so he shouldn’t be wasting time with somebody who wasn’t even a god anymore, who was just goddamn _dropped_ and that was that. Spain could talk all it wanted but it knew fuck all and anyway that wasn’t Spain, that was just a bunch of stupid reporters and this was a man and David was pushing him and he wasn’t doing anything about it. He was just dropping.

They twist over the carpet, David gasping already because he’s wanting it, wanting it fast but he’s tired because he’s just been goddamn fucking good for his country and now his knees hurt, his lungs are burning. He keeps stopping just to breathe. Hands on Raúl’s shoulders. Breathe. Mouth under Raúl’s jaw. Breathe. Raúl’s shirt up under his arms and his belly flexing towards David, and _breathe_. Breathe and stop and look when David doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see the fucking hole that shouldn’t even be there anymore when he’s gone and done it, swung it his way so far that it won’t be going back now. He doesn’t need some damn newspaper poll to tell him when he knows that like he knows the blood coursing through his veins.

Except his blood is slow today, and he’s slow, dragging his mouth up Raúl’s throat, dragging his hands up the man’s body. He tastes Raúl’s skin and gets his fingers full of Raúl’s hair, half-curled and soft and damp, and he sits with Raúl wrapped around his cock because he’s slow. He buries his face in Raúl’s shoulder, digs his fingertips into the carpet and groans because he’s slow. He likes it, because he’s slow and he can’t be slow. It doesn’t work that way for him. He doesn’t like it.

David doesn’t like it. He doesn’t. He hates it. He fucking hates himself. He’s that fucking good, and now that he is, he’s not satisfied and he hates it.

* * *

Spain wins the Euros. Raúl throws up his arms and dances like he’s there with them, with these friends and acquaintances and adversaries and successors that he sees on the screen. The knowledge of these other selves for them doesn’t go away, but for a moment he just doesn’t care about it. He’s Spanish, too. He’s allowed to be happy.

Fernando’s not there, though Raúl and he call and text and email later, both of them delirious for days like the rest of the country. But right then, Fernando’s not there and David is, spread over the screen, triumphant and something twists hard in Raúl, because he’s allowed to be happy but he’s not allowed to be anything but himself, and that’s what he’s like.

He knows where he is, he thinks, watching. He knows but he can’t stop looking.

* * *

Another phone call. David’s already awake this time, because he’d never gone to sleep in the first place. His hand is already in Raúl’s pocket, jammed down on top of the phone and it almost comes out just because of the way Raúl’s leg flexes when David pushes himself up. It’s easy to flip the phone over and look at the ID.

Raúl stirs, groggy. But groggy isn’t why he’s taking back his hand even as he puts it out. “Give…” he falters.

It’s not Fernando. It’s not even a Spanish number. It’s fucking Luís Figo, says the phone, Figo all the way in Italy and three years gone. Something boils up in David and he nearly cries, he’s so fucking grateful for the anger. “Just how fucking many do you have?”

After a moment, Raúl puts his hand down and lies back. He looks at David, clothes ripped open, David’s semen tracking over his stomach, and he’s still so fucking quiet and cool. His eyes flick down to David’s left hand.

“Don’t even—I still have it _on_ ,” David goads, jerking up his hand to show the ring on the fourth finger. It’s the hand with the phone and he’s so pissed off he drops the phone, careless with rage. “You think I fucking forget my wife with this?”

Raúl doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to, when he just slides his hand over the floor, pushing himself up, and David has to see the ring on the fourth finger of Raúl’s hand. And David understands but doesn’t, and David hates that and he shoves Raúl back down. For once Raúl fights, trying to twist away, but David has his shoulders and he shakes them so Raúl’s eyes close. Snarling, David shakes again and Raúl’s eyes snap open and that’s _anger_ in them.

Anger. David doesn’t—he sits there, on Raúl, paralyzed and he just—he hates that. Anger in Raúl’s eyes. That’s not how it’s supposed to go, that’s not what David likes and he’s fucking thinking about it now and he hates that too but he can’t fucking stop. He never can stop.

The phone stops ringing at some point. The silence snaps at them; Raúl jerks up like he took the brunt of it. Then he grimaces and leans back on his elbows, shaking his head. “David, get off,” he says lowly.

He’s just Raúl González Blanco at this point, just some man. Not Spain, not captain, maybe still Real Madrid but David’s punched enough holes in that paper tiger to just ignore it now. He’s just that but he tells David to get off and David gets off.

Raúl hands David some piece of his clothing before he gets the phone. He’s calling Figo back when David leaves.

* * *

“I don’t fucking get it. I just, I don’t, he’s a _fucking_ —”

Fernando shifts, swinging his legs uncrossed. He sprawls but there’s nothing relaxed about him and David instinctively tenses. But Fernando just looks at him, sprawling on the bench next to David. “Listen. I’ll talk to you about it, because we’re friends. Even though I can’t figure out why you’re talking to _me_ , but…David, he’s still my friend, too. Even if.”

It’s a break. David doesn’t know what a break is, since he doesn’t take them. “What? What, did you—”

“David, I don’t want to talk about it,” Fernando says easily, simply. Like that, he closes off something. He shifts again, and then opens something David’s never seen again. “And…you understand, what friends mean? I’ll stay out of the football, because that’s football. But if you’re talking about him, that’s different. Don’t hurt him.”

“What if he hurts me?” David snaps, reflexive to the threat. Then he thinks about the rest of it.

But Fernando’s already answering him, leaning forward, still easy and powerful and certain. “David,” Fernando tells him, “He can’t. Not unless you let him, and then that’s you, and I know better than to do anything about that.”

David’s still not satisfied. “But—”

“I can’t do anything about you,” Fernando repeats, and leans back.

* * *

David nearly shoves the edge of the door into Raúl’s face, and when Raúl blocks that with his arm, the other man forces his way inside. His hands rise and Raúl’s stepping back when David puts them around Raúl’s face instead of on his arms or his shoulders. And David tries to kiss him and Raúl pushes his arm up against David’s chest, but David forces himself over it and does kiss him, fingers pressed against Raúl’s cheeks, lips to Raúl’s mouth.

Raúl levers them apart, though he can’t get David’s hands further than his shoulders. He’s too short of breath. “David,” he says, and breathes. “You can’t.”

“Why not?” David asks roughly, and pulls Raúl.

Their mouths come together again and Raúl’s arm is still between them, crushing in Raúl’s breastbone and it has to be doing the same to David but David doesn’t seem to notice. He twists his fingers into Raúl’s hair, his mouth hot and wanting, and Raúl needs to steady himself and has no choice but to put his free hand on David’s side.

“Because I—” Raúl starts when they breathe.

“Like I fucking care,” David rasps, but he’s a beat slow and before his mouth comes down on Raúl’s again, his eyes tell Raúl he’s lying. He’s lying and he’s a bad liar and he’s angry at himself for it.

And for a moment, Raúl understands. He understands and he leans on the man and David makes his case with his mouth, with his tongue, with the flex of his lips echoed in the flex of his body and the flex of his fingers in Raúl’s hair. He’s good, he knows that now and he’s accepted it; he’s not fighting anymore.

So Raúl shoves them apart. He has to stand and press the back of his hand to his mouth, and then he looks up. “No.”

“Fuck you,” David says, and takes a step forward. He stops when Raúl flinches, but not because he suddenly regrets anything. “Fuck you. _Yes_. Yes, and you fucking tell me no again. You tell me. You know already.”

No. No, no, no. No because Raúl is too old for this, because he’s skirted this way before, because Fernando was never like this but once upon a time Raúl was, except when it came down to it, Raúl wasn’t. Because since then he’s been careful, he’s watched himself, he’s not gotten so close again. Because he still cares, damn him, but he knows that for him, caring doesn’t guarantee anything. He has regrets and guilt and pain and he’s used to them, and he doesn’t want to learn something else. Or relearn something. Because he is that goddamn old, and worn-out, and full of memories.

“You tell me,” David says again, harshly. He teeters in place. He’s still young; even in his anger and certainty, he looks at Raúl and Raúl can see the lack of knowledge in the man’s eyes. He doesn’t know like Raúl does, and he doesn’t know what Raúl will say. But he asks anyway. “Fucking _tell_ me.”

Raúl can’t answer.

* * *

“It’s funny,” Fernando remarks. Then he laughs, and combs his fingers through Raúl’s hair. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. But you and me, and me and him, and you and him…it’s funny.”

It doesn’t change anything with them. That’s what he’s saying. And Raúl appreciates that—more and more as the years pass—but at the same time…it doesn’t change anything. Fernando’s still Fernando, and Raúl will still be himself, and Villa.

Villa.

* * *

David stops when he’s got the door shut and Raúl safely backed against the wall, not pinned but clasped in by arms and legs. He grimaces as Raúl’s nails catch through his shirt, then kisses the man again, hard and pointed. His fingers slide down Raúl’s face, then lace behind the man’s neck as Raúl sags.

“You’ll fucking believe me sooner or later,” he tells Raúl. “You already do, even if you won’t say it.”

“David.” Raúl puts his head back, and he’s looking at David and David’s looking at him. It’s the first time. “You’re not—”

“I know, and you know that too, or you wouldn’t be here. You fucking know who I am.” David kisses him again, and then again. “Tell me. _Tell_ me.”

Raúl’s mouth presses back against David’s, and then Raúl’s hand slides up David’s back and David doesn’t push because he doesn’t have to. If he pushed, he’d stop and he doesn’t stop. He never does.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. David Villa [was born](http://blogs.reuters.com/soccer/2008/06/16/david-villa-is-the-best-striker-at-euro-2008/) in [Asturias](http://spainforvisitors.com/sections/asturias.htm), where coal-mining historically has been a major industry. He received his first national team call-up in 2005, and during the 2006 World Cup, was [often favored ahead of Raúl](http://www.euro2008.uefa.com/tournament/players/player=66414/index.html). Eventually Raúl was [dropped from the national team](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/oct/15/europeanfootball.sport1) during the qualifiers for Euro 2008 and World Cup 2010 and Villa effectively took his place, which caused a great deal of controversy as Raúl had still been captain and was considered a symbol of Spanish football. Villa played a major role in Spain’s Euro 2008 victory.  
> 2\. Raúl and Fernando Morientes have been close friends since their days at Real Madrid, and during Morientes’ [unsuccessful season and a half at Liverpool](http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/oct/02/championsleague.valencia), Raúl was spotted several times in the [stands at Anfield](http://raul.soccerstar.org/raul-biography.aspx), watching his friend play.  
> 3\. Raúl (González) began his football career in the Atlético Madrid youth system, but [moved to Real Madrid](http://www.goal.com/en-india/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=853814) in 1992 when Atlético disbanded their youth teams and has since become the “face” of Real Madrid. He is rumored to exert a good deal of backroom power at Real Madrid, even going so far as to block proposed transfers of players, although [he’s always denied the accusation](http://www.goal.com/en/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=878841). David Villa has [backed him up](http://www.goal.com/en-us/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=878326) in regards to Real’s rumored attempt to buy Villa during summer 2008, though in the past, Villa had been critical of Raúl in the context of the national team.  
> 4\. Raúl and Luís Figo became friends when Figo [controversially transferred](http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/news/kind=1/newsid=22186.html) from Barcelona to Real Madrid in 2000 and have remained friends, with Figo often visiting Raúl in Madrid. It’s also rumored that Figo [has sneaked back into Barcelona](http://www.elmundo.es/2001/03/03/deportes/962972.html) to visit Pep Guardiola, with whom he’s been close since they were teammates at Barcelona.  
> 5\. David Villa’s wife is named [Patricia](http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/2008/08/05/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-32m-spurs-target-david-villa-115875-20685101/). Fernando Morientes’ wife is commonly called Victoria by her friends and family.


End file.
